We have great corporate bureaucracies replete with corporate bureaucrats, but they are good; only public bureaucracy and government servants are bad. In fact we have in the United States an extraordinarily good public service-one made up of talented and dedicated people who are overwhelmingly honest and only rarely given to overpaying for monkey wrenches, flashlights, coffee makers, and toilet seats. (When these aberrations have occurred they have, oddly enough, all been in the Pentagon.)We have nearly abolished poverty among the old, greatly democratized health care assured minorities of their civil rights, and vastly enhanced educational opportunity. All this would seem a considerable achievement for in competent and otherwise ineffective people. We must recognize that the present condemnation of government and government administration is really part of the continuing design for avoiding responsibility for the poor.
我們有龐大的企業(yè)官僚機(jī)構(gòu)，充斥著企業(yè)官僚，但他們是好的；只有政府官僚和政府官員不好。實(shí)際上，美國有非常優(yōu)秀的公共服務(wù)隊(duì)伍一支由富有才干和敬業(yè)精神的人組成的隊(duì)伍，他們非常誠實(shí)，以致像出高價(jià)購買活動扳手、手電筒、咖啡壺以及馬桶座圈以獲取回扣的情況極為罕見。（奇怪的是，這些過失如果出現(xiàn)，全都發(fā)生在五角大樓）我們幾乎消除了老人的貧窮狀況，使醫(yī)療照顧更為民主，使少數(shù)人種的民權(quán)得到保障，并極大地增加了受教育的機(jī)會，這一切對那些無能因而低效的人們來說似乎是相當(dāng)大的成就。我們必須承認(rèn)眼下對政府和政府管理部門的指責(zé)實(shí)際上也是逃避對窮人負(fù)責(zé)的方案的一部分。
The second design in this great centuries-old tradition is to argue that any form of public help to the poor only hurts the poor. It destroys morale. It seduces people away from gainful employment. It breaks up marriages, since women can seek welfare for themselves and their children once they are without husbands.
為解決困擾我們長達(dá)幾個(gè)世紀(jì)的問題而提出的第二種方案認(rèn)為，任何形式的社會援助只會傷害窮人本身。它摧毀人的斗志，誘惑人們不再自食其力。它壞婚姻，因?yàn)閶D女離開自己的丈夫也能為自己和孩子求得保障。
There is no proof of this-none, certainly, that compares that damage with the damage that would be inflicted by the loss of public assistance. Still, the case is made-and believed-that there is something gravely damaging about aid to the unfortunate. This is perhaps our most highly in fluential piece of fiction.
這是無稽之談—當(dāng)然根本沒有兩者的比較，即得到救助受到的傷害與失去救助受到的傷害進(jìn)行的比較。盡管如此，人們還是提出并堅(jiān)信這一觀點(diǎn)，即幫助窮人會造成嚴(yán)重的傷害。這種說法也許是我們最有影響的一個(gè)虛構(gòu)故事。
The third, and closely related, design for relieving ourselves of responsibility for the poor is the argument that public-assistance measures have an adverse effect on incentive. They transfer income from the diligent to the idle and feckless, thus reducing the effort of the diligent and encouraging the idleness of the idle.
與第二種方案密切相關(guān)的推卸責(zé)任的第三種方案認(rèn)為，社會援助措施對激勵(lì)機(jī)制有不利影響。這些措施是把勤奮工作的人的收入轉(zhuǎn)給那些懶惰和無能的人，這會打擊勤勞者的工作積極性，卻會鼓勵(lì)懶散的人繼續(xù)懶惰下去。
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